IHG Hotels & Resorts has promoted Charlene Tan to Director, Corporate Affairs, Southeast Asia and Korea, expanding her leadership remit across one of the group’s most active growth regions.
Based in Singapore, Tan will lead IHG’s corporate affairs strategy across Southeast Asia and South Korea, overseeing corporate communications, public affairs, employee engagement and community impact initiatives. The promotion follows more than five years with IHG, where she most recently served as Senior Manager, Corporate Affairs, Southeast Asia and Korea.
In her previous role, Tan led corporate affairs across 10 markets, working closely with the regional leadership team on reputation management, internal communications and strategic storytelling. Her responsibilities also included communications programmes covering sustainability, talent and social impact, alongside the management of regional communications teams and external public relations agency partners.
The appointment places Tan in a broader regional role at a time when communications, public affairs and colleague engagement are becoming more central to hotel group performance. For operators such as IHG, regional growth is not driven only by signings and openings. It also depends on the ability to build trust with owners, support teams across different markets, communicate brand value consistently and maintain a strong reputation in environments shaped by regulation, labour pressures, sustainability expectations and changing traveller behaviour.
Tan’s promotion also reflects the growing importance of corporate affairs as a strategic function in hospitality. The role is no longer limited to media relations or crisis response. In a region as diverse as Southeast Asia and Korea, corporate affairs must connect brand narrative, public policy, internal culture, community impact and stakeholder engagement in a way that supports both business growth and operational credibility.
Among her key achievements at IHG, Tan launched the company’s first Southeast Asia Communities Report in 2024 and later expanded the initiative through the inaugural East Asia and Pacific Communities Report in 2025. She also introduced IHG’s first structured mentoring programme for its global communications function and led the rollout of the company’s public affairs strategy across Southeast Asia and Korea.
Those initiatives are particularly relevant to the new role. As hotel companies grow across mixed ownership structures and multi-brand portfolios, regional communications leaders are increasingly expected to translate corporate priorities into local-market relevance. Community reporting, colleague engagement and public affairs are part of that work because they help define how a hospitality group is understood beyond its guest-facing brands.
Tan brings more than 17 years of communications and marketing experience to the position. Before joining IHG in 2020, she served as PR and Communications Lead for Vrbo at Expedia Group. Earlier in her career, she spent six years with Banyan Tree Hotels & Resorts in global marketing communications roles, and also held marketing positions at Far East Organisation and City Developments.
That background gives her experience across hospitality, travel platforms, real estate and brand communications, a useful combination for a regional role that sits at the intersection of hotels, owners, communities, employees and public stakeholders.
The promotion comes as IHG continues to build scale across Southeast Asia and Korea. The group has been expanding across luxury, lifestyle, premium, essentials and extended-stay brands, with the region forming part of its wider East Asia and Pacific growth strategy. As of the end of 2024, IHG had 137 open hotels and 86 hotels in the pipeline across South East Asia and Korea, spanning 11 brands.
The region’s growth profile creates a demanding communications environment. Mature markets such as Singapore and South Korea sit alongside rapidly developing hospitality markets across Southeast Asia, where hotel groups must navigate different labour conditions, owner expectations, regulatory frameworks and community relationships. For a corporate affairs leader, that means balancing global brand consistency with local-market sensitivity.
IHG’s regional portfolio also covers a wide range of hospitality segments, from mainstream and midscale brands to luxury and lifestyle properties. This makes strategic storytelling more complex. A communications function must support development momentum, hotel openings, employer branding, sustainability initiatives and guest-facing brand narratives without allowing the message to become fragmented.
Employee engagement is another important part of the remit. Hospitality remains a people-intensive business, and regional corporate affairs teams are increasingly involved in shaping internal communications that support retention, culture and leadership alignment. In a sector where service delivery depends heavily on frontline teams, internal storytelling is not an afterthought. It is part of how companies build consistency across hotels and markets.
Tan’s move therefore signals more than a title change. It gives IHG a regional corporate affairs leader with established knowledge of its Southeast Asia and Korea business, experience across reputation and community reporting, and a track record within both hospitality and travel communications.
As IHG continues to expand across the region, the appointment underlines the importance of communications leadership that can support growth while strengthening trust with employees, owners, guests and communities. For Tan, the promotion represents a wider mandate within a region where corporate affairs will be closely tied to the group’s next phase of development.
